The petitioner's new form was stabilizing.
Soren, meanwhile, had fallen into thought. As a deity, he had many things to consider.
Death was the inevitable destination of mortals.
There were only three paths after death. The first was the complete destruction of the soul, the most miserable outcome. The second was to fall into the River Styx, be washed into the depths of the Origin Sea, and be reshaped, like a pile of wastepaper shredded and pressed into new sheets of white paper. The third was reincarnation of the soul. Whether in the Upper Planes or the Lower Planes, reincarnation was the best outcome after death, because it represented a new possibility, though for the weak, it might mark the beginning of suffering.
There was actually another possibility: being utterly faithless. Such people were exceedingly rare. It was almost unheard of to encounter someone with absolutely no faith, as loose belief was widespread throughout the multiverse. In the past few centuries, hardly any faithless had been plastered onto the wall. To avoid that fate, even people who hated the Gods would pay them a little lip service, and anyone who had done so no longer counted as faithless. The rules of the multiverse were much more lenient toward these people. Most were washed by the River Styx into the Origin Sea and pressed into new souls.
Of all forms of reincarnation, entering a deity's realm offered the easiest life.
Reincarnating elsewhere in a plane was like becoming a wild monster left to roam, with no one to offer protection and survival entirely dependent on luck. The Upper Planes were somewhat better, but in the Lower Planes, it was an outright tragedy. Many people whose faith was insufficiently firm but whose alignment was clear would automatically reincarnate in other planes. Evildoers